A grim report from a New York TV channel:
It was a violent night in New York City after at least 13 people were shot in incidents spanning each of the five boroughs....This is noted at National Review under the (schadenfreude-y?) headline "13 Shot Last Night in De Blasio's NYC." NR's Greg Pollowitz harrumphs (or perhaps "exults" is more accurate):
Weird. It's almost as if some said this would happen if NYC ended its effective stop-question-and frisk policing...Right -- because there were never bad nights like this when Mike Bloomberg was mayor, or bad weekends.
The reality? Well, there was this on an "unseasonably warm" November night in 2003:
Four people died in a night of rampant violence that included six shootings, 10 stabbings and a bludgeoning spread across four boroughs of the city, the police said yesterday.And this in late August 2010:
A 28-year-old man shot to death outside a Queens house party early Sunday was one of three people killed in separate incidents in New York City during a violent 12-hour stretch, authorities said.Then there was Memorial Day weekend in 2011:
Bullets flew over the Memorial Day weekend, leaving eight people dead of gun violence during the unofficial beginning of the summer.And, most notorously, there was Labor Day weekend of the same year, when 67 people were shot:
Three people were killed and two police officers were wounded in a shooting a few blocks from the annual West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, capping a violent holiday weekend in which nearly 70 people were injured by gunfire.All that happened long before Bill de Blasio became mayor, which was January 1 of this year. All of it happened long before August 2013, when Judge Shira Scheindlin declared the city's stop-and-frisk program unconstitutional.
Updated statistics obtained by NBC New York on Tuesday show that at least 67 people were shot between 12 a.m. Friday and 11:59 p.m. Monday. That includes nine on Friday, 10 on Saturday, 33 on Sunday and 15 on Monday.
(But shortly before that ruling, 25 people were shot in 48 hours in the city on the first weekend of June 2013.)
It's true that shootings are up 13% in the city this year -- but homicides are down 15.5%. That means that this year could see fewer murders in the city than in any year of the Bloomberg administration or the Giuliani administration.
The uptick in shootings is worrisome -- but if the murder rate is down, then the result conservatives are warning us about (and clearly secretly hoping for) -- a return to '70s-style mayhem -- just isn't happening.
And the city had plenty of violent nights and weekends in the stop-and-frisk era. They just didn't fit the preferred narrative.
With Sandy Hook, tragically, resulting in gun regulations being relaxed even more, why in the world is anyone surprised that gun shootings are down?
ReplyDeleteBesides, guns accumulate. It is no surprise that the shootings are up.
That homicides are down is good news. I would be interested I knowing why this is (could Obamacare, or more likely, the focus on healthcare during the Obamacare debate have,edobwtter treatment?)
Too many of our news sources have the NY Times motto backwards:
ReplyDeleteInstead of "All the news that fit to print," they believe it's "All the news that's print to fit."
Cops can still stop and frisk.. and they do. what has stopped (I hope) is the wholesale roundup of anybody standing on a corner or walking down the street.
ReplyDeleteIt was shoddy police work, but the LT wanted the numbers so the cops would roll up on any group of young blacks and roust them. up against the wall! spread your legs! bend over! show your hands..
Of course their pants would fall down and the cops would laugh.. empty your pockets! Pot in plain view is a misdemeanor!!
it used to be cops would observe and pick out the guys that were carrying drugs or guns.. they knew how.. but the kids from the academy were never taught the signs because they just searched everyone.